Unlock Freedom By Simplifying These 4 Key Areas

These are abstract, often subjective words. Up until 6 years ago I didn’t fully grasp how closely they were related.

You see, for a while I was happily collecting stuff: 100+ DVDs (including multiple versions of the same movies!) to make sure my collection was complete, plenty of bookshelves to fit all of the books I acquired (even if I didn’t have time to read them all), and tons of video games and new clothes just in case I needed them.

Many people, like myself for a while, equate freedom with more success, money, and stuff. When we do that, we often add complexity, stress, and obligations in our lives – racing to what we think will give us freedom. We spend more money on more stuff and then need to find more space to fit all that stuff, and the cycle can get out of control.

Eight years ago, things started to shift for me. I dumped my unfulfilling career, sold the majority of my possessions, lowered my overhead, hit “restart,” and simplified my approach to health and time management. And the result has been a whirlwind journey of leveling up my life one day at a time. I’ve been able to do things I never really dreamed possible by simplifying 4 key areas of my life.

If you’ve decided this is the year you’re going to improve your life, here are the areas that had the biggest impact on my journey. Pick one or two to focus on and really start to dig in.

Remember: by removing the unimportant, you will free yourself up for important.

1) Simplify Your Health: Over the past few years, I’ve become healthier and happier than ever by simplifying my workouts and nutrition. I follow the same routine week after week, and just focus on getting stronger with a few key exercises: squats, deadlifts, presses, pull-ups and push ups.

By getting rid of the extraneous exercises that provide minimal value, and focusing on getting really strong with these select exercises, your body gets the stress it needs to adapt and build a strong body (without spending hours and hours in the gym). Less time invested for far greater results.

The same is true with your diet.

Stop obsessively counting calories, weighing food, and loading up your brain with mental clutter. Don’t worry about cleanses and diets and supplements. Instead, stick to a few key rules:

Eat mostly vegetables and some protein with each meal

Minimize sugar (it’s in everything these days).

Don’t consume liquid calories.

Minimize processed food and carbohydrates.

When you build a healthy body, it gives you freedom to stay off medication, spend less on health care, and fewer hours at the doctor or in hospitals, giving you more time to grow with new activities like swing dancing or rock climbing.

2) Free Yourself from Distraction: Like many people, I make my living at my computer. If I can become more productive with my time, I can do better at my job. It’s tough to be free when you struggle to focus thanks to the wonderfully intoxicating pull of useless internet sites. So remove the need to use willpower to save yourself from distraction:

Install freedom.to on your computer, and block time wasting websites during work hours.

Turn off notifications or uninstall all apps on your phone that cause you to waste time.

Set a timer for 25 minutes and work, followed by 5 minutes of break. Repeat until done.

When you remove clutter, it gives you a chance to do less AND BETTER work.

Pick three big tasks to complete each day that will make the most impact in your business or job. Start the first task, and work on it until it’s complete. Then, do tasks 2, followed by task 3. In other words, stop multitasking.

The unimportant but seemingly urgent tasks will continue to get in the way unless you give yourself permission to cut them from your most productive time at work to focus on the important.

3) Stop Clogging Your Life with Stuff: In 2011 I got rid of most of my possessions and set off a multi-year trip around the world where I lived in 20 different countries. About a month after I began my trip, I threw away half of the things I had packed and brought with me.

I had thought I had already dumped so much of my crap before I left! But I realized even going through that process I packed over double what I truly needed. Shedding possessions like this often work in layers. And much of the time, each new layer we peel grants us flexibility and freedom.

By traveling light and wearing versatile, high quality clothing, I could change plans on a whim and move quickly. On top of that, when you spend less money on things, it frees up your money for experiences.

The same is true now even though I’m settled. Six months ago I decided to relocate to New York City, and two weeks later I had my few possessions loaded into my small car and made it to the Big Apple. Because I had lived below my means for many years, having rented an apartment with a few things rather than owning a big house I didn’t need, I had the freedom to choose my next step.

You may not want to travel the world and live in various countries. You may not want to make a big move anytime soon. But I challenge you to peel back a layer of stuff in your own life, whatever that looks like, and unlock the benefits of removing the excess.

4) Become Free to Grow: We all say we wish we had more time to do a fun or enriching activity, be it learning a musical instrument, learning a language, reading more, painting, taking a class, or exercising. If you’re a parent, your activity might be something that enriches your child’s life as well.

Why don’t many of us follow through on these new, fun and challenging hobbies that help us grow? Because we don’t “have time.” Because we are “busy.” Because we don’t “have the energy” to pursue them after a long day.

We are trapped under the burden of our commitments and the false importance we put on things that don’t matter to us. We’ve bought into the cult of busy – and place more value on that than we do growth.

Start small. Cancel your cable and choose to watch fewer TV shows (or get rid of your TV). Choose to stop reading and watching depressing news articles and stories and know that the world will go on regardless.

Instead, choose deliberately how you spend your time. When you viciously cut things from your life that don’t make you happy or provide value, it gives you the freedom to pursue a hobby that interests you and makes life worth living.

Over the past year, I started taking violin lessons simply because I thought it looked challenging and I love how it sounds. I only started improving when I cleared my free time of more news and clutter and noise and make practice a focal point.

Freedom is out there… answer the call.

Adventure, growth, and happiness are available to us. But most of us bury it by complicating our health, giving into distractions, filling our life with stuff we don’t value, failing to ruthlessly prioritize where we spend our time.

But there’s another way!

When you can deliberately choose to stop spending your resources – time, attention, and money – on the unimportant, it frees up your resources to be spent aggressively on the things that matter.

Again, my challenge to you is to pick 1 or 2 of these areas to start, and make tweaks today to simplify that aspect of your life.

Here’s to an amazing (and more simple) 2016!

***

Steve Kamb is the author of Level Up Your Life, a step-by-step blueprint for life that teaches you to eliminate the unimportant and start prioritizing growth, adventure, and happiness.

About Joshua Becker

Writer. Inspiring others to live more by owning less.WSJ Bestselling author of The More of Less.

This sounds like the journey I am on right now! So much of what you’ve written here is like a mirror for me… a reflection of the journey I am on and the intentions for the direction I am heading.

Thank you so much!!!! It encourages me to read articles like this. I’ve been watching a lot of videos on timy houses and minimalism and surrounding myself with encouragement to stay morivated and press forward. Minimalizing is tough work… but I like how you describe the progress as bring like layers. For me at has definitely been a shift…. in mentality and practice. It happens in progressive stages for me…. the letting go… the purging, the transformation. And the freedom gained is also in stages and a mirror image of the process…. lighter, and lighter and lighter.

I’ve begun to select what I want to see in facebook and social media by seeking out pages that lift and inspire my journey and my efgorts, and in doing so the things I no longer need have begun to fade into the background.

Thank you! I’m so happy I found your page. You’re a part of my journey. You’re becoming one of my cheerleaders (whethwr you planned it that way or not) and I’m grateful for your sharing…. putting this energy into the world!

Great ideas! I have embraced the simplified health–eating healthy foods without weighing myself or counting calories, and trying to stay active throughout my lifestyle, without the extra time involved with going to a gym. Same for TV. One struggle I have is balancing how much time I spend reading blogs (and writing mine) with reading books. I’d like to spend more time on books, so I’m trying to keep the books I want to read handy–by my computer & next to my bed.

I love the link between minimalism and freedom. For me, minimalism helps me choose courage in areas of my life where I’ve been hindered by worry, clutter, and stuff that ensnares me in its trap. What you’ve said about living more fully is, I think, the ultimate destination for minimalism. There is freedom on the other side; hopefully when we get there, we know exactly what we truly want.

YES to minimalism! I became more interested in minimalism almost by chance. A vague interest in capsule wardrobes coincided with a move from Sydney to London, followed by reading ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying’ by Marie Kondo. All have really helped me open my eyes to the material-driven life I’d been living and gave me the inspiration to live more with less. It’s liberating, isn’t it!
This post pretty much echoes my story, just in a different order. Thanks for sharing!

I read these posts and think to myself, “I already do pretty good in these areas.” However, deep down I know there are many more layers to peel back and I’m think I’m ready to read these post with new eyes and discover areas for even more improvement. Great post

I enjoyed the article until I reached the part about how we don’t have time to pursue fulfilling hobbies because we are “busy” and “don’t have the energy after a long day.” Is the male author really considering that many readers may be women like myself who are mothers that also work full time outside the home? The time I am using to read this blog and comment is my “down time” while I simultaneously cook tomorrow’s breakfast and prepare part of dinner. If I watch an hour of tv a week on the computer, that’s a lot. I do spend any truly free time I can find exercising, seeing friends, or working on my art, but those times are few and far between. I think it is presumptuous to assume that so many readers in this current economy are not genuinely too busy for leisure activities.

I don’t believe the author meant to diminish the natural busyness of life but to point out the added things that tend to make people feel busy which aren’t necessary. Personally, I work full time, am a single mom, workout 3-5 times a week, attend church twice a week and my daughter is in gymnastics twice a week. We are busy but we are busy doing things we love. I feel the author’s point is not to just fill your time with random activities but purposeful ones.

My goal for this year is to simplify my diet. I eat pretty well but know that I’m still eating too much sugar and too many processed foods.
I’m also going to install that Facebook News Feed Eradicator today! I’ve been working on getting away from Facebook but have still been plagued by all the news feed pop ups!

What a great post! For my family and myself, things got a lot better when I, personally, began to pursue contentment for myself. I used to think if I got decorated the house this way, bought these clothes, renovated this space, etc. I would be so happy! But, when I thought this way, we spent a lot more money and I spent a lot more time de-cluttering. My husband and I have three children, so we still have a lot more stuff than I’d like, but the mindset of not always buying, buying, buying has really cut down on that. It is a blessing to be more contentment. I am actually seeing my own children take on that characteristic because I am modeling it.

Such a great perspective. I’m the king of #2, especially when it comes to letting small stuff get in the way of things I don’t want to do (but really should). As I get older I’m getting more & more frustrated by the lack of simplicity in my life. “So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains. And we never even know we have the key…”

I’ve been on my journey for a few years now. It started when I had my first baby and couldn’t afford all of the fancy baby items that I believed made everybody happy. Mostly it came with my search for happiness. Now that my wardrobe, home, goals and life are simplified, I have cleared up time to teach my son, train my dogs, I self taught myself photography, picked up and actually stuck with playing my guitar, and every day am a step closer in my journey to where I want to be! I learn so much about myself and truly get satisfaction out of life. I’m excited to wake up and tackle each day (mostly)

Rather than getting rid of Facebook I opened a new account and only have friends and family in my newsfeed. More than half of my friends and family live out of state and some out of the country. Facebook allows me to keep up with their lives and watych their families grow. I spend a bit of time each week checking in and reading their updates and photos. To me this would be the same time spent reading and replying to letters sent by mail years ago.

This is some great advice except limiting carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates are crucial to our neurological systems and brain development. I am on a whole foods plant based diet for over 20 years and I am in incredible health!

Hello – What are the few exercises you do to keep in shape referenced in the article?

I still find it difficult committing to guitar practice. There are online lessons which have been just as beneficial as face-to-face instruction in “how to” for the beginner chords, but being disciplined with it has been a challenge. It is a similar challenge for me with moving forward in writing. Both are for personal interest so there are no demands or deadlines. I have a lot of rough ideas penciled out but get stuck moving things forward so move on to something else or get off track in the purpose of what I am writing-segways to journaling rather than something written for entertainment or perspective. I will try the timer technique. Perhaps just showing up and keeping the purpose for that time before me will improve things for both.

Thanks so much for sharing these perspectives and experiences. It is refreshing and encouraging to read them. I go through times of really not caring about things or being intentional–letting things go; however, these articles are an encouragement to only go so far and help get back on track without judgement.

Yada yada. Yet another guy making money off a blog telling the rest of use why we aren’t good enough the way we are. His ‘product’ is that we all need to live like him. There is a sexism in minimalism that articles like this don’t ever acknowledge and a patronizing that makes me cringe. Guys are more than happy to give up the extra golf clubs and pesky mortgages to take off around the world for 20 months. I’m happy for you if that’s going to be the way you finally grow up and discover that the only important things in life are love and relationships.
Families and communities are built around people showing up. You can’t show up at PTA to make sure the guy down the street doesn’t get away with burning library books if you are on your little zen life. This is patronizing because shedding our crap isn’t going to make us better people -appreciating what you have will.
And besides, our things don’t own us any more than our values, our hobbies, or our family’s do. I get the premise, and sure, it’s a hassle to wash the car I own. But I am not a nomadic creature – I am a woman with a home, a nest that I decorate and love because that is where i raise my family. It is the launching pad for the rest of our lives.
So aside from the same ol same ol of eating right and being careful
with your money, I’m so over minimalism. It’s just another fad diet: getting people to feel bad about themselves and run a away from things. If that’s what your problem is, what ails you isn’t your stuff, it’s what’s inside your heart that needs the TLC. The rest will fall in to place with or without the extra sweater sitting on your shelf.

I have often felt like I spent the first 15 years of parenthood accumulating and the rest so far getting rid of things. Great things that served a wonderful purpose- toys, craft supplies, books, puzzles and games, etc. Stuff can play an important role in raising a connected, creative family but I sort of wish that at the start I felt less pressure to save and accumulate in order to feel like a good mom (and homeschool parent).

1 MILLION READERS CAN’T BE WRONG.

Own less, live more, and create space for the things you love. Get new posts delivered right to your inbox: